Indigenous African Medicine and Faith Healing in the Zion Christian Church in South Africa: A Decolonial Perspective

(Hardback)

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Exploring Indigenous African medicine and faith healing within the Zion Christian Church, this book demonstrates the role of these healing practices from music and prophecy to implemented social restrictions. The Zion Christian Church is one of the largest churches in the African continent with footprints in other parts of the world. The author argues that these theories are important for understanding the healing practices within the broader context of the African Independent Churches. The theories of ritual healing, symbol healing, and holistic healing are brought together in exploring the healing practices in the Zion Christian Church. This book demonstrates that the ritual healing process does not end with healing but extends to the practices of spiritual protection and shielding of patients within African cosmology.

Exploring these theories, Mookgo Solomon Kgatle brings us to an understanding of worship beyond liturgical practices toward therapeutic implications. Similarly, practices of prophecies such as diagnostic prophecy, oracular prophecy, and prescriptive prophecy are explored to expound their implications on healing. In addition, the practices of social restrictions and taboos in the Zion Christian Church are discussed to demonstrate their implications on the healing and well-being of adherents.

The book also uses decolonial theory to argue that the intersections of Indigenous African medicine and faith healing are relevant for the decolonisation of the knowledge system on faith healing. This connection is important in the development of the theology of indigenous faith healing in the African Independent Churches by using the Zion Christian Church as a case study. Such a theology should be able to make distinctions between African traditional healing and the Indigenous African medicine.

Author Bio

Mookgo Solomon Kgatle is Professor of Missiology at the Department of Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology, University of South Africa, South Africa. His research is in the history, mission, and theology of African Pentecostalism. He is an NRF-rated scholar and appeared in the 2023 list of Top 2% Scientists Worldwide by Stanford University and Scopus.